Practical inspection workflow for digital image forensic authentication

Abstract

Combining with newly emerging and mature practical tools in digital image forensics, we explore a typical inspection workflow for digital image forensic authentication in practical case examination. The techniques both in digital and multimedia forensics are integrated into the workflow which covers the whole life cycle inspection of digital images. We divide the workflow into the digital-based, metadata-based, and statistical-based image forensics techniques. In the digital-based image forensics, the operation system (OS) and the physical storage examination are considered. In the metadata-based image authentication, we inspect the coding related metadata. The statistical related artifact detection, such as the sensor noise, recompression, copy-pasting, resampling, etc., is included in the statistical-based image forensics. The proposed inspection workflow for digital image forensic authentication can well deal with the anti and counter forensics techniques in the image tampering.